First a tip from a contact – check out the Facebook page www.facebook.com/SpokaneNews where the news is created by the readers of that page.

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Data comes from the State’s ESD web site. For Spokane, unemployment estimate rose from 7.7% to 8.6%. For the State, unemployment rose from 7.3% to 7.7%. In King County, unemployment went down from 6.3% to 6.1%.

Use caution when reviewing the following chart. The original, raw data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will not be released to the public for another month or two.

Our forecast for January 2013 non-farm employed is a level of 202,200 and an unemployment rate of 8.7% to 8.9%.

That’s based on the average cyclical drop from December to January that took place from 2008 through 2012.

Compare the monthly totals reading across the chart from left to right. Spokane area unemployment usually peaks in January or February.

Spokane’s job creation rate remains at or below the growth of the overall area population, unfortunately. This is a really long and tough downturn.

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The intent of this web site has been to collect local economic data and historical trends. Some times we stumble on non-economic data we would rather not see and wish we had nothing to do with it. I wish the following finding is not true as this looks really bad. I am not a reporter – and hopefully the linked sources are all wrong. But it would be great if a real reporter would look into this.

Last year, the PFD said the Arena needed to be expanded to meet a new NCAA requirement of 12,000 “sellable” seats. The Arena already had 12,000 seats but many hundreds of seats are used by media, bands, cheer teams, official and others such that the Arena had less than 12,000 “sellable” seats.

But in June 2012, the NCAA lowered the minimum seat requirements to 10,000.

When the Spokane Arena previously held the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball rounds one and two, they failed to fill all available seats (this is before the expansion).

The Arena expansion is no longer needed and the PFD is covering this up.

(Update: By request I have turned comments back on for some recent posts. They were turned off, mostly, a year ago, since I spend little time on the blog now, and comments require monitoring. Hope that helps and thank you for your suggestions, ideas and corrections.)

The State’s “adjusted” employment data for Spokane County (thru November 2012) shows an upward spike:

The US government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics “raw” data for Spokane County (through November) shows a subdued seasonal rise in jobs. (Data is from the US BLS “One Screen” database). In a traditional post recession recovery, we should be seeing a job growth rate similar to how it was before the recession took hold (pre-2008).

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About

In early 2009 I wondered why several prominent businesses had closed and moved elsewhere and began to look into figuring that out. This web site is the culmination of a part time hobby in understanding why many companies closed or left Spokane.

Click on the "Start Here" link. I was surprised to learn these problems have been around for decades and are documented in official reports on the region's economy.

This web site is based on actual data. Because much of the data is sour, that may be misinterpreted as cynical. There is a difference between realist and cynical. But regarding the review of 30 years of economic strategy reports - that's borderline cynical and with good reason.

The purpose of this web site is to share what I found - not to pick a fight. Data sources are usually referenced; some data had to be re-typed by hand and I could have made a mistake. Some data sources could be out of date or might not make sense - I've tried to identify those. Some may be wrong - that happens - consider this like the rumor web sites and verify for yourself. May be my interpretations are hare brained. Please post corrections in the comments. I hope the information is useful to you. Thank you. If you spot an error, please leave a comment with the correction.

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